SUICIDE OR MURDER?
She said she discovered her ex dead when she dropped round dinner…
Kenneth Nix was successful in life but unlucky in love. e motorbike enthusiast and mechanic had a thriving scuba diving and underwater salvage business. But by the time he was 38, he’d been married and divorced three times. He had three children from his rst marriage, who he adored, but for Kenneth – known to his friends as Ken – lasting love seemed to have eluded him. en, in 1984, he met Judith Bailey. An accountant, she was also divorced, and had two teenage daughters, Angela and Michel, who everyone called Shelly. ey began dating and married a year later. Judith became a bookkeeper for Ken’s business, and the couple had a happy marriage and blended family.
But after 25 seemingly blissful years, things fell apart.
One of Ken’s sons, Keith, felt Judith coddled the kids, nancing them any time they had a problem, which Ken didn’t agree with.
It caused turmoil between the couple and ultimately communication broke down completely.
e couple divorced in 2011 but remained close. Judith bought her own home but would often stay over at Ken’s.
e couple would share meals together and sometimes Judith would make food and bring it over to Ken.
It seemed neither of them was quite ready to let go of the close bond they shared.
But then, on March 21, 2016, Judith made a frantic call to emergency services.
She told the operator she’d arrived at Ken’s house just after 9pm to drop o some dinner she’d made and found him dead from a gunshot wound.
“It looks like someone shot him,” she panicked. “ere’s a gun right by his left hand.”
e dispatcher asked Judith if her ex-husband had been suicidal.
“Yes, he’s very despondent, he’s got so many health issues,” she said. “Neuropathy is getting so painful he just can’t deal with it anymore.”
Police o cers quickly arrived at Ken’s home and found him dead as Judith had described in the master bedroom. He was 69 years old.
Judith said before that evening, the last time she
After 25 years, things fell apart
had visited her exhusband had been the afternoon before, around 4 or 5pm, but she’d left because he’d become “tired and grumpy”.
She also said she’d called him before she’d dropped by that night but that he hadn’t answered the phone.
Sadly, it seemed like a textbook case of suicide by a man who was living with chronic pain.
But as investigators looked at the scene, doubts began to arise…
e medical examiner said that the blood on Ken’s head had dried and lividity had started, which is the pooling of blood and takes a number of hours to develop.
en, when investigators moved Ken’s body they found two bullet holes in his head, approximately an inch apart.
Surely someone taking their own life wouldn’t be able to shoot themselves twice…
Police also found that blood patterns around the body and on Ken’s shirt indicated the body had been moved.
ey concluded that Ken had been murdered – and his death had been staged to look like a suicide.
Investigators interviewed Judith’s daughters. Michel DavisPearson told cops she’d gone to the house on the morning of the murder around 11am. She said she’d seen her mum but not entered the property.
Police didn’t believe her. ey arrested her for being an accessory to murder after the fact.
Later, her sister Angela’s ex-husband Todd Moore told cops both Angela and Michel had told him their mother had shot
Ken, and asked him to help cover it up.
Upon hearing her daughter had been arrested, Judith spoke to police.
She said Ken was “impossible to live with”, abusive, and on the morning of the murder had told her she owed him $32,000.
She claimed that when she’d told him she didn’t have the cash, he’d pulled a gun on her.
She said she’d tried to grab the gun o him and in the struggle had shot him twice in the head.
Her daughters, she claimed, had helped her clean up the scene.
Investigators saw no sign of a struggle in the bedroom. Judith, then 69, was charged with rst degree murder.
Angela Moore was also arrested for accessory to commit murder.
In court, Judith’s allegations of abuse and defence of ‘battered woman syndrome’ were debunked, and in fact it was proven that on several occasions, Ken had called police because his ex-wife was being abusive towards him, and for threatening to kill him.
Texts between Judith and her daughters revealed her hatred for her ex, and in one message to Angela she discussed obtaining a gun.
Judith’s nances revealed she was heavily in debt and prosecutors believed Ken’s request for money she owed him was the motive for the murder.
According to their divorce, if anything happened to Ken, Judith would inherit the house, which she’d be able to sell to get herself out of debt.
Eventually, both of Judith’s daughters agreed to testify against their mum if charges against them were dropped, and in March 2017, Judith Nix, 70, was found guilty of rst-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison and won’t be eligible for parole until she is 108 years old.
They saw no signs of a struggle